La Guerra d'Etiopia: L'ultima Impresa del Colonialismo

TitleLa Guerra d'Etiopia: L'ultima Impresa del Colonialismo
Publication TypeBook
Year of Publication2010
AuthorsDel Boca, Angelo
Number of Pages297
PublisherLonganesi
CityMilan
Abstract

"Today, May 5, at 4 p.m., at the head of the victorious troops, I entered Addis Ababa." With these words, Marshal Pietro Badoglio telegraphed Mussolini the official end of the hostilities in Ethiopia, which had cost 4350 dead, 9000 wounded and 40 billion liras. But the war was far from over. Less than a quarter of the Ethiopian territory had been occupied. At least one hundred thousand soldiers of Haile Selassie's army remained in arms. From that day on, a secret war began, without communiqués, hidden by censorship, during which ten times more soldiers were killed than in the official war. Angelo Del Boca was the first historian to give a very critical reading of Italian colonialism, of which he denounced the crimes (massive use of chemical weapons, creation of real concentration camps, deportations and mass killings). In this volume he reconstructs in detail the various phases of the Ethiopian campaign, which was the prelude to the pompous proclamation of the Empire. But that proclaimed triumph, which marked the culmination of popular favor (and fervor) towards Mussolini, also marked the beginning of a war of local resistance that kept Italian troops busy until 1941, the year in which the British attacked the colony and put an end to the Fascist imperial dream. It was a short-lived dream and, in spite of the atrocities, now well known after the opening of the state archives and the publication of mountains of documents, even "innocent".

Translated TitleThe War of Ethiopia: The Last Enterprise of Colonialism
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587025328

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